Texas State Senator J.E. Buster Brown was born and raised in the south Texas town of Mercedes. Brown attended Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos and graduated from Texas A&I University in Kingsville with a B.S. in Secondary Education. Following graduation, he taught high school government and history in Corpus Christi before furthering his education at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin. He graduated with an LLB/JD in 1967, and was appointed a briefing attorney by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. In 1968, he became Assistant District Attorney and Prosecutor for Brazoria County. Brown entered private law practice in 1972 and, as of 2002, has continued his law and mediation practice in Lake Jackson. He was elected on the Republican platform in 1980 to represent Senate District 17, encompassing portions of Harris, Fort Bend and Brazoria counties and including more than 600,000 constituents. At his retirement in 2002, Brown was the senior ranking Republican member of the Texas Senate and had sponsored 633 bills which became Texas law.

As a member and chair of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, Senator Brown authored the Brown-Lewis Water Management Plan and later continued this effort with legislation addressing implementation and financing of the state's water plan. The Senator was involved in work to meet the federal Clean Air Act standards, founded the Texas Water Foundation, and co-founded the Texas Council on Environmental Technology. Additionally, he authored the Texas Emission Reduction Plan, secured the passage of the Petroleum Storage Tank Law, worked to clean up hazardous waste, created the Rigs to Reef program, authored legislation to give local landowners and communities more input into the endangered species protection laws, and created the Wetlands Protection Act.

During his terms in the Senate, Brown also served on the Administration and Jurisprudence Committees, among others, where he was involved in creating Texas' original child pornography statute, bringing private jail facilities holding out-of-state inmates under the regulation of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, authoring the Crime Victims Bill of Rights and enhancing the Texas death penalty statute to include murder of a child, working to protect jurors from harassment, and drafting legislation to increase the penalties and reporting/registering requirements for sex offenders.

In other areas, Senator Brown served as a member of the Joint Interim Committee on the Family Code, authored the law which extended the Property Redevelopment and Tax Abatement Act, sponsored legislation strengthening Health and Human Services Commission, and co-authored major tort reform legislation. The Texas Aerospace Commission was created through legislation authored by Senator Brown, as was the NASA cooperative education program, which creates high school and university level cooperative education programs through NASA and the Johnson Space Center.